Japan has an extra-smart rocket cued up at the launch pad for a
ride into space.

The country's space agency plans to fire its first unmanned
Epsilon rocket into orbit on Tuesday (Aug. 27) to demonstrate it
is possible for a rocket to do its own health checks using
artificial intelligence.

This process will allow the Japanese Exploration Agency's (JAXA)
launch control to proceed on conventional desktop computers
rather than the computing behemoths that launch engineers are
used to. [ See
More Photos of Japan's Epsilon Rocket ]

"This became possible by introducing an automatic and autonomous
checking system and reducing hazardous operations as much as
possible so that dramatic electricity and manpower savings have
been achieved," Yasuhiro Morita, Epsilon's launch vehicle project
manager, said in a statement.

He also vaguely hinted at taking even less time to launch
rockets: "We still have some room to additionally decrease the
campaign period significantly with further improvements," Morita
said.

Japan has been launching solid-fuel rockets since 1955, first
into the upper atmosphere and eventually reaching for space. In
the ensuing decades, the ground for launch services has greatly
shifted.

Miniaturization and more powerful computers are allowing for
smaller and smaller satellites. This makes rocket launches
cheaper, since there is less mass to bring into orbit, requiring
less fuel. Launch costs are still a major drag on satellite
budgets, however. That's where JAXA hopes Epsilon will shine.

Unlike previous upper stages, however, Epsilon will be able to
run many of its own status checks, which will save a lot of time
and effort for the people normally required to monitor a rocket's
health, JAXA officials said.

"You may doubt that
artificial intelligence can be used in a rocket, but nowadays
a self-inspection function is something commonly seen in
machinery," Morito stated. "Another example is a medical device
such as the electrocardiograph, which uses artificial
intelligence to diagnose heart abnormalities."

Rapid launch time

While Epsilon itself will have extra smarts, JAXA is also aiming
to get the rocket off the pad faster than a conventional one.
Rocket assembly will be streamlined so that Epsilon can be taken
to the pad with most major components put together, rather than
doing it on site.

Once the first stage arrives at the launch site, the rest of the
rocket can be put together in just seven days, JAXA said. This
makes it among the most quickly constructed rockets in the world,
JAXA said, and represents a marked improvement over M-V's
construction time of 42 days.

JAXA is also trying to push down the weight of the rocket even
further, through methods such as selecting a tougher carbon fiber
for the propellant case. The newer case weighs less than previous
versions, cutting down on the need for fuel.

Epsilon won't ride into orbit alone. On board will be a small
science satellite, the Spectroscopic Planet Observatory for
Recognition of Interaction of Atmosphere (SPRINT-A).

The tiny telescope aims to peer at Venus, Mars and Jupiter and
other planets to see how quickly their atmospheres bleed into
outer space. With that data in hand, scientists hope to better
understand how Earth's atmosphere behaved when our planet was
young.